The present invention relates generally to aircraft, and more particularly to an improved apparatus and related method for achieving flow control about a military aircraft weapons bay.
As is well known, many types of military aircraft are provided with a weapons bay which is located on the underside of the aircraft fuselage. The weapons bay is typically enclosed by a pair of weapons bay doors which, when closed, are generally continuous with the fuselage. The opening of the weapons bay doors allows for the ejection of equipment or stores (e.g., munitions) from within the weapons bay.
In existing military aircraft, the opening of the weapons bay doors during flight often results in highly unstable aerodynamic flow which buffets aircraft structures and/or equipment/stores within the weapons bay, and further causes acoustically excited vibrations. As will be recognized, the impingement of the airstream against such structures and/or equipment/stores could potentially damage the same, with the acoustically excited vibrations also being a potential cause of damage thereto and to the aircraft itself. These large, unsteady forces may also have adverse effects on the ejection of the equipment or stores from the weapons bay. In this respect, safe ejection requires that the equipment or stores exit the aircraft in a stable manner so that they do not impinge the aircraft, and such that guided equipment or stores may be brought under control before entering an unstable trajectory.
In order to address these problems, aircraft designers typically either have to make more rugged the aircraft structures, equipment, and/or stores within and in close proximity to the weapons bay, or provide spoilers on the aircraft which deploy when the weapons bay doors are opened. The use of more rugged structures, equipment, and/or stores can add severe weight and cost penalties to the aircraft and its weapons systems. Though spoilers are effective, their efficacy is limited to only certain flight regimes. In this respect, modern military aircraft require weapons deployment under more diverse and adverse flight conditions, thus establishing a need for a more cost effective weapons bay acoustic load suppression device which is tunable, or can be adjusted to accommodate a wide variety of flight conditions. The present invention addresses this particular need in the prior art.